The Truth About Mascaras

I love experimenting with inexpensive makeup. I often find them to be as good or better than expensive designer brands. Mascaras are a great example of this.

Our eyelashes have a texture, just like our hair, so they respond differently to various mascaras. Think of mascaras as you would hair preparations like mousses, sprays and gels you would put in your hair to achieve specific effects. Some will be too heavy and weigh it down and some will lend body and add volume. Finding the right weight and viscosity of mascara for your eyelashes can be a trial and error drill but doesn’t have to be an expensive one.

The fine texture of eyelashes, which most women have, will appear longer and thicker with a more viscous and dryer formula. Wet formulas will stick fine eyelashes together, weigh them down and won’t be able to separate them. The dryer mascara will separate, lengthen and volumize finer eyelashes.  

If you have eyelashes that are more coarse, your eyelashes can handle a more wet formula without being weighed down.  

Recently, I have found love with Maybelline Great Lash and L’Oreal Voluminous Butterfly mascaras. I was never a fan of a real wet mascara, the kind that sticks your lashes together and appears as though you just lifted your face out of the water. I prefer a dryer formula that separates, lifts and thickens each eyelash. Actually, I like my mascaras best about 3 weeks after I first open them. They thicken and become a bit dryer and then they really separate and add volume to my eyelashes.  

A former Borghese mascara user, I swore I could never live without it and then forgot to pack it for a vacation. The closest store was a pharmacy and I decided to just grab a Great Lash, since so many of my clients had told me they used it. I shuttered at the packaging, the tacky pink and green. No sleek tube? It seemed a bit wet, at first, but by the end of the week I was in love! The brush was firm and separated my lashes, beautifully. My bottom eyelashes are extremely long and most mascaras would leave me with black dots under my eyes just from looking down all day, since I am a permanent makeup artist. With Great Lash, no black dots! Since I have permanent eyeliner, myself, I found I could even place my wetting drops in my eyes, after a long day of work, without the mascara running. It was water-resistant! Could this be? Perfect!

My other backup was L’Oreal Voluminous mascara. Working as a makeup artist for many years, many artists knew that L’Oreal made a great mascara. It was inexpensive and went pretty far. It was also a formula that was gentle and didn’t irritate sensitive eyes. We didn’t get the benefit of its full, round brush since we had to use our skimpy disposable brushes. However, it worked on various textures of eyelashes, separating and creating fullness without clumping.

When they recently began to advertise the L’Oreal Butterfly mascara, I had to try it. It is truly great! It has a great brush that lifts and separates beautifully. The Waterproof Butterfly Mascara is fabulous from the very first application but a mascara remover is necessary to remove it. This formula is simply wicked and perfect for that special occasion where you really want to flaunt your lashes at their longest.

The brushes in your mascara tube are important but not as critical as the mascara, itself. When the formula is right, the brush was always secondary to me.  

If you find your mascara is melting into your eyeliner every time you wear them together, consider changing your eyeliner or consider permanent eyeliner. If they eyeliner you are using has oils that meltdown, they can manage to smear and displace any mascara. Experiment to see if this is the case by just wearing your mascara without eyeliner to see if it remains intact.

The best part, these 3 tubes of mascara, collectively, are still less expensive than just one tube of most department store designer brands and every bit as good or better.  

In closing, I do have one major Pet Peeve that I must put out there. How stupid do mascara manufacturer think we are when we look at their ads in magazines and they are showing eyes with false eyelashes, while bragging about their fabulous lash-lengthening mascaras??? The public, especially anyone that has any makeup experience, can see this from across a room. It is insulting women’s intelligence.  Please stop!!!

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